DECEMBER 2006 :: HOT TOPIC: POPULATION

America: 300 Million and Growing

The official U.S. population count topped 300 million this fall, driven largely by a robust birth rate, longer life expectancy and high levels of immigration.

The population is projected to continue growing to 400 million in 37 years. At current growth rates, the U.S. population will double in 70 years. That is in stark contrast with many other developed countries that are expected to experience population declines. Even China's population is expected to begin declining in 2030.

A look behind the growth:

GROWTH: Population growth is determined by three factors: births, deaths and immigration. Americans have among the highest birth rates in the developed world-14 births for every 1,000 people each year. Also, modern medicine has cut the mortality rate to roughly eight deaths per thousand people annually. In comparison, Germans have eight births and 10 deaths per 1,000 people annually.

AGING: While the population is growing, the makeup of that population is changing. Today's elderly population is the largest it's ever been. People age 65 and older currently account for 12% of the population. By 2050, that will be closer to 21%. Analysts say that aging population will weigh on the U.S. economy with greater health-care and retirement costs.

IMMIGRANTS: In the U.S., an aging population is likely to be increasingly supported by immigrants paying taxes and Social Security. Today, there are 35 million foreign-born people in the U.S.-an all-time high. Immigration accounts for 40% of population growth annually.

Jeffrey Passel, a demographer from the Pew Hispanic Center, estimates that immigrants and their U.S.-born offspring made up 55% of the last 100 million people in the U.S. Without them he estimates the population today would be at 245 million.

WHERE AMERICANS LIVE: Today about 50% of the total population live in suburbs or "exurbs" of metropolitan areas, up from 38% in 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At the same time, the percentage of the total population living in cities remained unchanged at 30%.

Also, metropolitan areas are growing outward. That means more commuting, and highways.

Today, nearly 60% of the U.S. population lives in the South and the West, up from about 50% in 1970. Much of this transition has to do with a decline of the manufacturing industry in the Midwest and a growing retiree population that seeks warmer climates. -Lauren Etter

--Lauren Etter

The Facts

› In the U.S., a child is born every seven seconds, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A person dies every 13 seconds. A migrant enters the country every 31 seconds. There's a net gain of one person every 11 seconds.

› Since 1900, the U.S. has experienced just one population decline-in 1918, because of World War I and a flu epidemic.

› An estimated 106 billion people have lived on Earth, according to the Population Reference Bureau. The current population is about 6.5 billion. That means about 6.1% of all people ever born are alive today.

›Foreign-born people make up 12% of the U.S. population, with Mexico as the leading country of origin. In 1967, they made up 5%, with Italy as the leader.

›By 2050, the world population is expected to increase to 9.1 billion. Nine countries are expected to account for half the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Dem. Rep. of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, U.S., Ethiopia and China.

›The U.S. population officially hit 100 million in 1915. It hit 200 million in 1967. It is expected to hit 400 million in 2043.

Points of View

›"A society needs to have a population that grows. Not one that is in a steady state. In this global economy ... population growth is important to maintain the youth and vitality of our labor force."

--William Frey, The Brookings Institution

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›"The world does not need more people, and the U.S. in my judgment does not need more people either. It certainly does not need 100 million more. What is the benefit in terms of quality of life? More cars? More congestion? More pollution?"

--Charles Westoff,
Office of Population Research
Princeton University

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› "Where do you go to be alone when there are 300 million people?"

--Carl Haub, Population Reference Bureau

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›"Immigration has been a boon to the American economy. Immigrants are ambitious, their children are successful in schools for the most part, and they've added flavor to American culture."

--Sam Preston,
University of Pennsylvania

Our View

"How will we house the next hundred million Americans? ... How will we educate and employ such a large number of people? How will we provide adequate health care when our population reaches 300 million?"

--President Richard Nixon, 1969

President Nixon didn't live to see his questions answered, but recently, the U.S. population surpassed the 300 million mark. And surprisingly, the 300 millionth American was not greeted with the same concern as the 200 millionth. Call it progress.

Around the time the country's population hit 200 million, biologist Paul Ehrlich compared "America's pride in her growing population ... to a cancer patient's pride in his expanding tumor," according to Time magazine. Stewart Udall, a former secretary of the interior, thought 100 million sounded like a better number than 200 million. Messrs. Ehrlich and Udall are still among our 300 million, but the population bomb they foresaw has conspicuously failed to explode.

In Japan and Western Europe, population decline has become the crisis of the moment. Birth rates in most Western European countries are now so low that governments are busily looking for ways to avoid a very different kind of demographic catastrophe. The problem posed by Europe's aging population is exacerbated by its reliance on young workers to support its public pension systems; America, with both a greater emphasis on wealth accumulation and a higher birth rate, is comparatively better off. Demographics and Social Security are on a collision course here as well, but Europe's difficulties in this regard make America seem fortunate by comparison.

China, thanks to its draconian one-child policy, also faces a demographic challenge. Population-control measures have resulted in a shortage of women and girls, one of many unintended consequences of the population-control hysteria of the 1960s and 1970s.

The debate over population revolves around a single fundamental question: Are human beings a burden, or a resource? The former view is embodied by the Ehrlich and Nixon quotes above. More bodies mean more mouths to feed, house and provide for. At a certain point, in this perspective, you run out of stuff.

The latter view holds that people don't just consume things. They make them, too. More bodies mean more minds, more innovation, more dynamism and more progress. The history of the world as America went from 100 million or 200 million to 300 million lends a lot more support to the humans-as-resource view than the humans-as-burden view. In the middle of the last century, the fathers of the population-control school of thought warned that when world population reached seven billion, the "carrying capacity" of the planet would be reached. Mass starvation and political upheaval would result. Well, we're getting right up there, but the bread lines are getting shorter, not longer.

Simply put, the reason is prosperity. For decades, economic growth has easily outstripped population growth, giving the U.S., and much of the rest of the world, both more people and more prosperity. Meanwhile, the slowdown in population growth brings a whole new set of challenges. To meet them, America and the world will need more minds generating new ideas. Four hundred million, here we come.

This is the opinion of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. What's your opinion? Write to letters.classroom@wsj.com.